The Fifth Grade Expedition

Mr. Martin's Classroom 119

Newsletter 4, November 7, 2007


REPORT CARD NEWS AND CONFERENCES


CONFERENCES-I have many parents now signed up for conferences on November 8th and 12th. There are still openings and I always meet on other days if necessary. Our conferences will be student led, based on the student self evaluation, portfolio, and report card. Conferences last 10 minutes per session.

SCIENCE-The Matter Matters Unit concluded recently and the post test was given on Thursday. Final grades are based on test scores along with selected pages from their journal.

MATH-Math grades will be based largely on test and makeup scores, with a smaller percentage based on the homework grades.

SOCIAL STUDIES-Social Studies grades will be based on the unit 1 test and the economics test. Extra credit assignments were optional, and all students who felt that their learning was not accurately measured on the tests have been invited to work on an extra project or assignment.

ELA-English Language Arts scores will be highly based on AR, reading letters, and writing scores

Accelerated Reader Point Rubric

The quarter 1 tests for AR close this Friday. Student grades are calculated on the percentage of their goal. The following is the rubric:
Grade AR Score
100 100
95 80-99
85 50-79
75 25-49
65 1-24
60 0

Missing Assignments and Webgrader

All missing assignments have been updated in Webgrader. They were previously marked as a zero score. This tends to really devastate a grade and also gives an inaccurate picture of student progress for an overall subject grade. Scores for missing assignments in webgrader have now been converted to 70%, and marked with an incomplete.

Chinese

Students really love this! An expert Chinese Language Teacher is working with our students for 45-minute periods on Wednesdays. Students are learning Conversational Mandarin Chinese Language along with Chinese Characters. They are also learning about the culture and geography of China.